...a gap is opening open up between the ‘public value’ to society of next generation broadband and the ‘private value’ available to investors in these services. Evidence of the positive externalities resulting from next generation access has yet to emerge – largely because these networks are only just being built. However, over the next two years as international deployments of next generation broadband accelerate and a new wave of bandwidth intensive are taken up by the mass market, the requirement for next generation broadband in the UK is likely to become much more transparent.